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Slash commands

Slash commands give you live control over the agent's configuration, tools, and session state without leaving the chat prompt. Every command is available through the / palette - type / at an empty prompt, then filter by typing, navigate with Up / Down, and confirm with Enter. Pressing Esc closes the palette without running anything.

Quick reference

Command What it opens
/model Model picker - choose the planner model, set idle timeout, browse and download local models, manage remote models
/tools Two-level tool browser - all agent tools grouped by capability set
/mcp MCP server list - servers, their tools, and per-server approval mode
/config Config editor - capabilities, sandbox mode, and logging
/compact Compact the current conversation immediately
/help Keyboard reference and command list
/fresh Start a new conversation (mints a fresh session id)
/reset Start a new conversation (alias for /fresh)
/clear Clear the visible screen (keeps the current session and history)
/exit Quit Ripple
/quit Quit Ripple (alias for /exit)

/model - model picker

Opens a unified overlay for managing the planner model. The overlay has three tabs:

  • Select - choose an on-device MLX model or a registered remote model as the planner for this session. Also shows the idle timeout setting (how long Ripple holds a loaded model in memory before unloading it).
  • Local - browse the Hugging Face model catalog, see which models are already in the local cache (~/.cache/huggingface/hub/), and trigger downloads from within the chat.
  • Remote - browse OpenRouter's free model catalog, add models to your registry, and remove ones you no longer want.

Switching models takes effect for the next turn. The selected model is persisted to settings.json as selectedModel.

See Models (overview) for a full discussion of model types, config, and download options.

/tools - tool browser

A two-level browser that shows every tool the agent currently has access to:

  • Level 1 - capability sets (e.g. filesystem, shell, MCP server tools).
  • Level 2 (press Enter on a set) - the individual tools within it, each with its description.

This is read-only - use Configuration (/config) or toolPolicy in settings.json to enable or disable tools.

/mcp - MCP server browser

Lists every configured MCP server alongside its transport type, authentication status, and approval mode. Press Enter on a server to drill into its individual tools.

Additional actions from within the browser:

  • Press r to initiate an OAuth sign-in for servers that require it.
  • Press x to sign out (clear stored OAuth tokens) for a server.

See MCP servers for configuration details, transport types, and troubleshooting.

/config - configuration editor

An interactive editor for the session's live configuration:

  • Capabilities - enable or disable middleware (e.g. clipboard integration, screenshot access).
  • Sandbox - set the sandbox mode (off, failover, container-only).
  • Logging - configure the JSONL debug transcript directory.

Changes made here are applied immediately for the current session and written back to settings.json. See Configuration (overview) for the full settings schema.

/compact - manual compaction

Triggers context compaction immediately, regardless of how full the context window currently is. Ripple summarizes the older turns of the conversation into a single summary turn, preserves the recent tail verbatim, and offloads the original messages to disk so nothing is lost.

Tip

Compaction also fires automatically at 85% of the model's context window. Use /compact early when you know the conversation is about to grow large (e.g. before a long coding session) to keep the context meter low.

See Context & compaction for details on the summarization strategy, configuration knobs, and recovery of original messages.

/help - keyboard and command reference

Displays the full in-app keyboard reference and command list. This is a quick in-session lookup; the complete reference is in Keyboard reference.

/fresh and /reset - new conversation

Both commands start a completely fresh conversation by minting a new session id. The old session is not deleted - it stays resumable via ripple --resume. Tool policy, model selection, and configuration carry over to the new session.

Note

/fresh and /reset are equivalent. They exist as aliases to match different muscle memories.

/clear - clear the screen

Clears the visible terminal output. The current session id, message history, and all state are preserved - /clear is purely cosmetic, unlike /fresh which starts a new session.

/exit and /quit - quit

Both commands exit Ripple cleanly. The current session is saved to disk before exit and will be available the next time you run ripple --resume.